4 – Sociocultural Disease Clusters

The woman in the poster board like collage is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She wrote a book detailing her infibulation experiences which helped to improve the social awareness about this controversial traditional African Muslim practice.

This is one of several applications for GIS to medicine which I promote with regard to my NPHG approach to analyzing population health.

Investigating sociocultural disease patterns is one of the most valuable uses for spatial epidemiology within the managed care setting. It may also soon become the most controversial as we begin to point the finger at certain racial, ethnic or cultural causes for certain disease patterns.

Four classes of "foreign diseases" are defined on this page.

We are most familiar with just one or two of these classes, and spend little if any time investigating the remaining sociocultural issues in public health.